Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1887-04-23
LINCOLN'S READING.
How He Read Homer's Had In the once
of an Illinois Hotel.

Oh an ILLINOIS hotei'
! heard IA new story about Abraham
Lincoln, and best of all about Abraham
LincOln's reading, which of all sides
of him is perhaps least known. A
friend of mine now in the city, who
had the good fortune to know Lincoln
well for two years before his election
az President, says while sitting in his
hotel in Bloomington, H.. early one
morning thirty years ago, the landlord
came upstairs and asked him to como
down and be introduced to Abraham
Lincoln, known and loved of all land
lords in the region about Springfield.
My friend went down and found the
tall, smooth-shaved lawyer, to whose
face, he says, no engravings or por-
traits do justice in its wonderful and
expressive power. He was reading
Homer's "Iliad," in a translation, of
course. Lincoln held the book out at
arms length after word OF two had
passed, when he laughed and said: 81
have made up my mind that have got
to read Homer's Iliad,'" and the
quaint look which has become his
torical spread over his face, "You
know man might as well be out Of
the world as not read Homer Iliad. ="
1t was the summer of the hot campaign
between Lincoln and Douglas, and this
lawyer politician, whose public reputa-
ton was probably as far removed from
the classics as any who has reached
eminence in our annals, had selected
AS the book with which he would fill
up a gap in his mental education dur
ing the intervals of this hot political
debate Homer's "Iliad."
There is or ought to be somewhere a
travel-worn Shakespeare which de-
serves to be shrined at Washington.
Robert Lincoln-to return to Abraham
Lincoln's READINGS fond of saying
that his father never Travelled without
his copy of Shakespeare packed in q
box with him. In the odd moments OF
cases and trials, in desolate courthouse,
in the cheerless rooms of more desolate
hotels, in the dirt and discomfort OF
railroad travcling-and few of us know
what railroad travelling was on the
long stretches of Illinois roads thirty
years ago-Abraham Lincoln read anC
reread this worn-out copy OF Shake
spearc, committing great stretches o
it to memory, until, as most men know
| he was able to match the average ac
quaintance of most actors with greater
passages of the great plays. Judg'
Kelley took one of the actors of thu
day. John Mccullough ] think it was
during the war to see Lincoln, and wa
amazed to find the President as familia
with the poet as was the actor. 1t i
of still more interest, in connection
with Mr.. Wilson Barrett's theory o
Hamlet" that Abraham Lincoln one
asked Hackett, whose Falstatf was tn
delight of an early day; "Why do yo
actors always play Hamlet as an irresc
lutte. vacillating, vague, middle-age
sort of . mani" because he was,
replied Mr.. Hackett, with the acut
certainty Of the actor. But he wa
not said Lincoln; "he was young
impetuous, full of action, prompt. H
is always doing some thing. The pla
is full of it, and he ought to be playe
as a young man.
Twas privileged the other day to hea
Walt Whitman express his opinion c
these conflicting theories of Hamlet,
"Is not that said the old man, in til
slow. ponderous, hesitating tone i
which he often pauses for word, BIT
never stops for an idea, sis not tina
the mystery, the wonder, the fun of i
as the slang word would have it, tha
Hamlet combines both these phases
the uncomfortable impulse, aggressiy
temperament, and at the same time tn
meditative, philosophic, anxious, hes
tating manP Is not this the interest {
the character which has caused it to b
overlaid with great accumulate, whic
have hidden the poets real purpose
if he had one?" Philadelphia Press.